Marinus van der Lubbe and the Reichstag fire

You must not know anything about the Reichstag fire.

To create the crisis the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag building.

(It wasnt the Nazis that set fire to the Reichstag building.)

To create the crisis the Nazis set fire to the Reichstag building.

By any reputable account [the fire] was started by the Nazis].

Historians generally accept the fact that member of the SA used this tunnel to place incendiary material in the basement of the Reichstag.

Anyone who thinks the Nazis didn't start the Reichstag fire is a fool.

is, at the very best, disputed.

The claim was made by the Communists in the immediate aftermath of the fire. Outside of Germany - given the sham trial the Nazis put up at the time, trying to indict all Communists and make people believe in an impending "Communist coup d'etat" - this version found some supporters.

simply don't reflect the truth.

Not by reasonable people.

If the Nazis did not themselves set the fire what purpose did the sham trial of communists serve?

If there is legitimate evidence that someone other than the Nazis set the fire, why was not such evidence ever brought to light?

I doubt that you'd understand the truth if you saw it.

Why don't you take OE up on [his] challenge

By your reasoning if someone says Hillary Clinton runs a brothel on the moon she must really run a brothel on the moon because that's what rumor says.

As Vogt points out there is no definite proof that the Nazis set the fire, but the incredible speed with which Hitler exploited the fire gives credence to the rumors that circulated in Germany at the time that the S.A., acting under Goering's orders, set the fire.

By your reasoning, if someone says that the Nazis started the Reichstag fire they must really have started the fire because that's what the rumor says.

How do you make this conclusion?

It is a common tactic on the left to make outlandish charges that must be true simply because they are outlandish.

By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building.

Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire, then went to work using it as his torch.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring's residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.

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Quote:

The site was founded and is owned and published by Philip Gavin, who has earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northeastern University and a Master of Science degree from Boston University. Except where noted, the articles and text appearing throughout The History Place Web site were written by Mr. Gavin.

Seems like a good source. You guys should write to him and explain to him that he wrong.

The supposed arsonist was a Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe, whom some have claimed was brought to the scene of the crime by Nazi agents. Others have contended that there was no proof of Nazi complicity in the crime, but that Hitler merely capitalized on van der Lubbe's independent act. The fire is the subject of continued debate and research.

LUBBE, Marinus van der (1909-1934)

That evening of Monday 27 February 1933, at nine o'clock, van der Lubbe threw in a high window at the front of the parliament building and climbed through. Running through the hallways he succeeded in starting fires in several places and eventually found a door to the large assembly hall, which he set alight within a few minutes. He had taken off his overclothes to that end, using them as torches, and especially the long, cork-dry curtains behind the chairman's seat had caught fire immediately. When a little later the glass roof cupola shattered with a big bang because of the heat, it worked as a chimney and within two hours the entire hall burnt out. Wardens, who had initially been distracted by the smaller fires on their way, reached the meeting hall at after a quarter to nine, and could grab van der Lubbe there.

Nobody had to doubt that it had been arson. But it was not surprising that, with such a large fire, the thought was of more than one arsonist and a kind of political conspiracy, especially when Van der Lubbe turned out to be a kind of communist. The government, whether or not it sincerely feared an uprising, used the fire with both hands - Nazi leaders like Hitler and Hermann Göring at the forefront - to break the leftist political opposition in one go. [..] Within several weeks, no less than ten thousand leftist political prisoners were locked up in prison or in a camp. [..]

This rapid 'Machtergreifung' in turn seemed to confirm the impression that had, in its turn, immediately taken hold among non-national socialist observers that the fire had been all too convenient for the Nazi's and for that reason might well have been started by themselves. Almost immediately, the Komintern (Communist International) chose for this interpretation and made efforts to propagate it. Thus, the unscrupulous Komintern agent Willy Münzenberg compiled a "Braunbuch über Reichstagbrand und Hitler-Terror [Brown book on the Reichstagfire and Hitler terror]" in Parijs, which was to 'prove' the theory of arson by the Nazis with falsified documents and statements and was distributed in many languages and editions in August 1933. During this effort, [Dutch] communists also lent themselves to portray Van der Lubbe as a mentally handicapped and always already 'facsist'-inclined man, who with his homosexual inclinations had been persuaded by his Nazi friends to play the role of 'Allein-Täter' in the arson. In reality, again according to that Braunbuch, at least seven Nazi stormtroopers would have entered the Reichstag building with Van der Lubbe on 27 February through a subterranean heating pipes tunnel and started the fires there, in order to subsequently, leaving behind the Dutchman, escape again through that tunnel.

In the same year, Van der Lubbes [Dutch] comrades in their turn tried to show with the texts from letters and statements in a "Roodboek: Van der Lubbe en de Rijksdagbrand [Red book: Van der Lubbe and the Reichstagfire]" that he would and could never have become a voluntary tool of the national-socialists. But this did not prevent the idea that the Nazis had committed the arson to stay very much alive later too, even though over time Van der Lubbe was rather seen as victim than as accomplice. [..]

Only historical research started in the late fifties by Fritz Tobias, [..] provided this West-German journalist with the evidence that, both practically and technically, it had in fact been possible for one man to start the large fire within minutes. Furthermore he showed [in his book Der Reichstagsbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit [The Reichstag fire. Legend and Reality.] 1962)] that Van der Lubbe consistently insisted on his solistic act during his confession and trial. His largely passive attitude during the trial should be explained from the trials of his long 'Einzelhaft' [and] his injured pride, caused by how he was not given credit - not even by the four [communist] co-defendants, whom he emphatically pleaded free - for his revolutionairy deed [..].

If one oversees Van der Lubbes life, it mostly merits the qualifications sad and pityful. If one assumes, as has been described here in the wake of Tobias' argumentation, that Van der Lubbe did started the fire on his own, by his own and out of sustained revolutionary conviction, then only one word fits: tragic. His deed after all had consequences that were directly contrary to his intentions, and facilitated and hastened the 'Machtergreifung' by the national-socialists.

And that's a very cautious assessment still. A good recent biography that makes a convincing case that, in light of all information now available, Marinus van der Lubbe did act alone is Martin Schouten's Marinus van der Lubbe - Eine Biographie. Only available in German (and Dutch), I'm afraid. It includes also the diary and letters of van der Lubbe.

Van der Lubbe has been wrested free from the dust of history more in the past year than in the over six decades that preceded. Expositions, art works, a documentary and a theatrical play cast new light on the figure who became well known through ten minutes of committing arson in the Reichstag, on 27 Februari 1933 [..].

The Marinus van der Lubbe year is still amply going on. Next May, the Humanist Broadcasting corporation will broadcast the documentary Water and Fire from [..] Joost Seelen. His film [..] was slashed in the reviews [artistically], but has been useful as research. Seelen used the money he had available for research to emply three researchers to explore the newly accessible archives in the former GDR and Soviet Union and track down the last contemporaries of the troublemaker from Leiden.

The research did not yield any specific news, but did cement the conclusion that Van der Lubbe started the fire all by himself. Not just did he not work together with communists, he was also not a tool in the hand of the Nazis. The Reichstag fire was a spontaneous initiative, intended as a signal. Van der Lubbe had already walked around for two days with four pieces of wood, drenched in petroleum, and started fires in three other locations before he set the German parliament on fire: the Berlin city hall, the Berlin castle, and an unemployment office in the neighbourhood of Neukölln.

He also did this all not so much against Hitler fascism, as rather for the working classes, which were supposed to interpret the sea of flames as a clarion call for mass action. To that extent his action had a counterproductive effect, in two ways: Hitler used the Reichstag fire as an excuse not just to arrest communists but also suspend the basic rights of all citizens. And the interpretations of the fire made communists, anarchists and socialists even more divided than they already were.

Martin Schouten [..] had access to the texts of the Reichstag fire trial, the letters of Van der Lubbe and the research material of the team of Seelen's. But nothing changed about his conclusion that Van der Lubbe and only he started the fire in the Reichstag.

That conclusion was also already drawn by the German historian and social-democrat Fritz Tobias in 1962 in his Der Reichstagbrand. Legende und Wirklichkeit. That book now is established as a standard work. Lou de Jong [the long-standing Dutch authority on all things WW2] took the twenty pages he devoted to Van der Lubbe in part 1 of his series about the Netherlands in the Second World War from this book.

Tobias' argumentation that Van der Lubbe acted alone was necessary. The conclusion was far from obvious. The Braunbuch [Brown book] that had been published in the spring of 1933 under the auspices of the Komintern-man Münzenberg - chief of the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] but mostly working for Stalin - portrayed Van der Lubbe as a semi-idiot, a tool in the hands of Göring and Goebbels, who in turn had engineered the fire in order to be able to clean out the communists immediately afterwards.

From Görings working palace, a system of tunnels leads to the Reichstag; SA-men had gone through those with fuel and wood. SA-chief Röhm was gay and Van der Lubbe was one of the lovers he used. That was the explanation. A 'counter trial' in Londen, supported by well-known figures, spread publicity about this communist version.

The Nazis of course had their own explanation: Van der Lubbe - a communist and a Dutchman after all, was the fuse in an international plot to set off a communist uprising. [..]

[A legal rehabilitation] will not take place anymore [now], says Schouten. Rehabilitation to him is when Van der Lubbe finds his place in history. "The Cold War is over. Nobody has a political interest in Van der Lubbe anymore. He is free, as a historic figure [..].

Rehabilitation means that 'Lubbe' can be seen as normal and as a solitary actor. That was also the argument made in the Redbook that a Trotskyite-Anarchist circle of friends of him published in 1934; but distribution was marginal, the effect nil. Partly because of that the legend of the Braunbuch remains stubborn, even now.

A loose coalition of leftist publicists (the 'Luxemburg committee') still holds to that version today. The Yugoslav historian Edouard Calic formulated this point of view - 'Lubbe' as tool of a Nazi plot, thought up by Goebbels, supportted by Göring and executed by the SA - once more in Der Reichstagbrand, which appeared in 1969 [..].

The German historians Bahar, Hofer and Fischler adopted the thesis, and the recently opened archives of the GDR and the Soviet Union also allegedly prove that the Nazis engineeered the Reichstag fire. "But that doesn't appear from anything, they didn't put concrete facts on the table," Schouten says. He finds it revealing that the website on which Fischler made his argument dissappeared from the net this year.

Schoutens book in turn includes the police report of March 3, 1933, which concludes that Van der Lubbe acted alone. That it became such a sea of flames, was not due to any helpers of 'Lubbe', as the conspiracy theorists argued, but rather to the incompetence of the German fire brigade. Van der Lubbe started a small fire in the Plenarsaalm which firefighters overlooked and which caused an enormous curtain to catch fire, after which the glass roof above snapped and the column of fire was sucked at once outside through the cupola.

Seelen: "The East-German film Der Teufelskreis from 1956 about th Nazi plot behind the Reichstag fire, for example, was never officially released in the Netherlands. But somebody turned out to have seen it as child of communist parents. Somebody from the Communist Party would come round on a scooter to show the film in the living rooms of Amsterdam communists. You can just imagine, such a dude on a scooter with that film under his arm, and those party members who then were watching the movie together and were nodding and saying afterwards, see, that Van der Lubbe... we always said so already."

Seems like a good source. You guys should write to him and explain to him that he wrong. (That statement is a reference to "The History Place," a site maintained by Mr. Philip Gavin.)

"The History Place" is an award-winning site focusing mainly on the history of the United States of America. Compiled and owned by author Philip Gavin, the site features guest essays in the points of view section from Barbara Ehrenreich, Lynne Cheney, and Philip Gourevitch. There are features on what events took place in this month in history, homework help, photo and speech of the week.This site is of use to those who wish to gain a basic knowledge of US history, from the Revolution to World War II. Although there is also a section entitled World history, it contained at the time of cataloguing, the author's own eight-part history of the Irish potato famine, and an anthology "Genocide". The site has some interesting accounts, but should be used, as all Internet sources, with caution. Events covered include: The Vietnam War; The American Civil War and World War Two. The site features advertising.

By a weird coincidence, there was also in Berlin a deranged Communist conducting a one-man uprising. An arsonist named Marinus van der Lubbe, 24, from Holland, had been wandering around Berlin for a week attempting to burn government buildings to protest capitalism and start a revolt. On February 27, he decided to burn the Reichstag building.

Carrying incendiary devices, he spent all day lurking around the building, before breaking in around 9 p.m. He took off his shirt, lit it on fire, then went to work using it as his torch.

The exact sequence of events will never be known, but Nazi storm troopers under the direction of Göring were also involved in torching the place. They had befriended the arsonist and may have known or even encouraged him to burn the Reichstag that night. The storm troopers, led by SA leader Karl Ernst, used the underground tunnel that connected Göring's residence with the cellar in the Reichstag. They entered the building, scattered gasoline and incendiaries, then hurried back through the tunnel.

The greatest challenge to Hitler's survival during the early years of the Third Reich came from his own brown-shirted storm troopers, the SA (Sturmabteilung) led by Chief of Staff, Ernst Röhm.

The battle-scarred Röhm was a decorated World War I combat officer and a post-war street-brawler who had been with Hitler from the start. Röhm's jack-booted storm troopers were largely responsible for putting Hitler in power. On the front lines of the Nazi political revolution, they had risked their necks battling Communists for control of the streets and squashed anyone who stood in Hitler's way.

Mr. Nimh is just a bombastic fool. He cannot stand to have anyone tell him he is wrong or even disagree with his opinion.

No thoughts on this bit, flaja?

Still standing by your original claims?